A Special Edition of USAC’s Schools and Libraries News Brief of February 28, 2020 announces the availability of a new FY 2020 Category 2 budget tool. The new tool was apparently rushed into use without a lot of user testing. It is valuable, looks to be accurate, but is a little quirky.
As of Sunday, the new tool was not listed in the Tools section of the USAC website; only the previous version of the Category 2 Budget Lookup Tool, which provides data on Category 2 commitments through FY 2019, remains there. To access the new tool, use the link in Friday’s News Brief or bookmark the Category Two Budget section on the USAC website and use the FY2020 C2 Budget Tool link.
The FY2020 C2 Budget Tool link brings up the new tool itself, an Excel worksheet with 14 columns. As shown below, users wishing to print out a competed worksheet should do so on large (perhaps legal-sized) paper and may want to have a pair of reading glasses handy.
Not all these columns are actually necessary, nor completely accurate. Columns G-J, for example, show the derivation of the FY 2020 budget factor. This is fixed information for any specific type of applicant. For schools, it shows the following:
| |
Col. G: |
FY2019 Multiplier = 157.67. This is rounded to the nearest penny, however, that was not how it was done in FY 2019 when the actual multiplier was 159.669053922. |
| |
Col. H: |
FY2020 Inflation Factor = 3.35. The actual inflation factor used for FY 2020 was 2.1%; the “3.35” is the “FY 2019 Multiplier” as adjusted for inflation and rounded to the nearest penny. |
| |
Col. I: |
FY2020 Bridge Factor = 32.60. This is the additional 20% provided to account for the sixth year added to all previous five-year budgets, again rounded to the nearest penny. |
| |
Col. J: |
FY2020 Multiplier = 195.63. This is the per student school multiplier for FY 2020 that for the first year is correctly rounded to the nearest penny. Note, that the figures in Columns G-I add up to only 195.62 as the cumulative result of the FY 2019 rounding adjustments. |
This is not a big deal. The FY 2020 school multiplier of $195.63/student is correct. This means you can safely ignore Columns G-I. What you can’t easily do is delete or hide these useless columns because they are locked – as are all columns on the worksheet except Columns A-B.
Using a little Excel magic to reduce the new Category 2 budget tool to a somewhat more manageable and readable size, let’s consider some simple examples of the tool’s results as shown in the condensed table below (you may still need reading glasses).
To use the new Category 2 tool, enter the appropriate entity numbers in Column B. If the student count in that entity’s EPC data is correct, no additional information is needed. The tool will capture the student count from EPC, will calculate the total outstanding Category 2 commitments on a prediscount basis from the previous five years, FY 2015-2019, and will calculate the remaining prediscount budget total for that entity available in FY 2020. In this sense, the new tool works like a charm, at least for the entities we’ve checked so far. But note the following in the five line items we’ve shown:
| |
Line 17: |
School A’s EPC profile shows 523 students (Col. F). At $195.63 per student, the school’s total Category 2 budget is correctly calculated (Col. K). The prediscount total of all Category 2 funds currently approved and committed for FY 2015-2019 is shown (Col. L). Note that this amount corresponds with the total shown in USAC’s earlier Category 2 Budget Status tool as of FY 2019. The “FY2020 Remaining Budget” is obviously higher than the “Remaining Balance” shown in the FY 2019 tool.
The tool is also set up to report any Category 2 funding still pending for the preceding five years (Col. M) – in this case none (this is a new and welcome feature not provided in USAC’s previous budget tool). The tool then calculates the entity’s remaining prediscount budget available for FY 2020 (Col. N).
But what you might ask is the $11,998.43 shown in Col. O? And what is the “$ - ” in Col. P? The answers are that Columns O-P are used to recalculate Category 2 budgets when the user enters in a different student count in Column C. If no value is entered in Column C, the Columns O-P are calculated as if the student count was zero. Therefore, the system sets the Category 2 budget at the minimum level that is $11,998.43 for FY 2020. On this basis, School A has already used more than its minimum budget, so it’s remaining FY 2020 budget would be $0.00.
|
| |
Line 18: |
Using the same School A (the system doesn’t appear to check for duplicates), assume that the user does enter an alternative student count in Column C – in this example, 550 students versus the 523 students shown in EPC. Columns F-N remain the same, but Columns O-P are updated to reflect the higher number of students. Note that this establishes both a higher total budget (Col. O) and a higher FY 2020 budget (Col. P). |
| |
Line 19: |
School B, in this example, has only 59 students (as shown in EPC) and therefore qualifies for the minimum Category 2 budget. Without entering a different student count, the budget data shown in the current entity profile columns (Col. F-N) matches the budget calculations shown in the entered data columns (Col O-P) (i.e., there is no budgetary difference between 53 students and zero students). |
| |
Line 20: |
If there is no student data available in a school’s EPC profile, the tool simply reports that the “Entity type does not have a C2 budget.” |
| |
Line 21: |
Manually entering a student count for an entity with no EPC student data does not help; the tool continues to report that the “Entity type does not have a C2 budget.” |
Despite its quirkiness, USAC’s new Category 2 budget tool is a valuable addition for applicants seeking category 2 funding for FY 2020. We encourage applicants to read Friday’s News Brief carefully and to review the FY2020 C2 Budget Tool – Instructions available online.